Par sa différence et par sa similitude, l’homme à la peau foncée interpelle les anciens qui, dès les savants grecs, ont voulu trouver des raisons géographiques et climatiques, c’est-à-dire ‘scientifiques’, à son altérité. C’est le monde romain antique qui a été choisi comme cadre du présent travail. On y utilise un corpus de textes littéraires, historiques et philosophiques latins, considérés dans un éventail chronologique large (du IIe s. av. J.-C. au Ve s. ap. J.-C.), sans s’interdire éventuellement la comparaison avec les référents grecs. Le travail s’appuie sur une démarche lexicologique, avec l’étude des mots latins de couleur et de leurs connotations, pour mener une enquête sur les interactions entre l’évocation de la couleur de peau ‘autre’ et les concepts sociaux, philosophiques, religieux du monde romain antique. On cherche quels sont les hommes à la peau foncée avec lesquels les Romains ont été en contact, qui sont venus dans la Ville, et quelle place ils y ont tenue, restreinte entre quelles limites et vouée à quelles fonctions, avec quel impact sur leur nouvel environnement — et sur eux-mêmes. On sollicite aussi, le cas échéant, la documentation iconographique. On explore le domaine de la littérature patristique, dans laquelle l’homme à la peau foncée occupe une certaine place, et l’on cherche à caractériser la dimension symbolique qu’il acquiert chez les premiers écrivains chrétiens. On retient de manière critique les apports des spécialistes précédents qui se sont occupés de la question (F. M. Snowden, L. S. Senghor), en tenant compte de la difficulté qu’éprouvent des modernes à s’abstraire de leur propre univers culturel, conceptuel et intellectuel pour étudier ces réalités du contact entre gens à la couleur de peau différente dans le monde romain de l’Antiquité. / By its difference and its similarity, the man with the dark skin appeals to the elders who, from the Greek scientists, wanted to find geographical and climatic reasons, that is to say “scientific reasons”, to his otherness. It is the ancient Roman world that was chosen as the framework of this research. A corpus of literary, historical and philosophical Latin texts is used in a wide chronological range (from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD), however, in comparison with the Greek referents. The work is based on a lexicological approach, with the study of the Latin words of color and their different connotations, to investigate the interactions between evocation of skin color 'other' and social, philosophical, religious of the ancient Roman world. What are the dark-skinned men with whom the Romans came in contact, who came to the city, and what place they held, restricted between what limits and what functions, with what impact on their new environment - and on themselves. If necessary, the iconographic documentation is also requested. The field of patristic literature is explored, in which the dark-skinned man occupies a certain place, and we try to characterize the symbolic dimension that he acquires in the early Christian writers. The contributions of the foregoing experts (Fr. M Snowden Jr., L. S Senghor) are critically taken into account, taking into account the difficulty experienced by moderns in abstracting from their own cultural, conceptual and intellectual study these realities of contact between people with different skin color in the Roman world of antiquity.

Les ambassades des cités d’Asie Mineure constituent un poste d’observation commode pour qui veut apprécier les évolutions politiques et institutionnelles qui travaillèrent les communautés grecques de l’irruption des légions en Orient à la fin du Haut-Empire. Cette enquête portant sur un temps long permet notamment de cerner les évolutions dans les raisons qui poussaient les cités à en référer aux autorités romaines. Si l’institution du principat constitua une rupture indéniable en personnalisant les relations entretenues par les communautés de l’Orient grec avec une Rome conçue jusque-là par elles comme une puissance collective, il n’en reste pas moins que plusieurs éléments de permanence prouvent que la mue des ambassades civiques d’actes éminemment diplomatiques en faits purement administratifs n’était pas totalement réalisée à la fin du IIe siècle apr. J.-C. Les pratiques ambassadoriales ont quant à elles fortement évolué, car elles étaient tributaires des mutations institutionnelles, diplomatiques mais aussi sociales du monde romain. Toutefois, on a pu entrevoir à travers plusieurs phénomènes de contournement par les communautés grecques des normes diplomatiques romaines l’aspiration persistante des entités civiques à manifester une forme de vie extérieure, et donc un semblant d’autonomie à l’égard de Rome. Malgré l’apparition, notamment au sein des élites civiques, d’un discours dépréciatif condamnant l’envoi intempestif de délégations, dépêcher pour de bonnes raisons une ambassade à Rome permettait de donner à voir, non plus la liberté absolue de l’entité émettrice, mais le dialogue qu’elle était capable d’instaurer avec les maître du monde antique. / Asia Minor cities embassies are a good vantage point to assess political and institutional evolutions that went through Greek communities from the arrival of legions in the East to the end of the Early Empire. This investigation focuses on a long time scale that allows us to see evolutions in the reasons why cities would refer to Roman authorities. Principate institution was a break away in the relationships between oriental Greek communities and Rome, that they considered until then as a joint power. However, many continuities show that civic missions haven't quite shifted from being diplomatic acts to purely administrative facts at the end of the 2nd century. Ambassadorial practices have evolved a lot, being linked to institutional, diplomatic and social mutations of the Roman world. However, the several workarounds of Roman diplomatic rules can be seen as a persistent will for Greek communities to express their autonomy towards Rome. Despite the outbreak, especially among civic elites, of critical views towards inopportune delegations, sending a mission to Rome for good reasons would allow to show, not the complete freedom of the sending entity, but the dialog that it was able to establish with the masters of the antique world.

This thesis examines the lives of women in Classical Greece in the context of war. War is often regarded as the domain of men but actually it is a social phenomenon where everybody is involved. Scholarship has begun to be interested in issues of women and war in Classical Greece, while they are insightful and demonstrate portions of women’s experience, studies to date have not attempted to create a holistic view. In such studies, women are generally depicted as a single homogeneous group, their involvement in war is viewed as limited and exceptional, and they are only seen as the marginal victims of war. This thesis, by contrast, strongly argues for diversity in women’s experiences during war. It demonstrates the centrality of war to women’s lives in Classical Greece, as well as how women’s experience might vary according to (for example) their social and economic circumstances. By analysing both written sources and archaeological material across the Classical period, this thesis intends to produce a broader perspective. By providing the first full-length study on the subject, this thesis, thus, contributes to the disciplines of both gender studies and warfare studies. This thesis begins by investigating the way in which ancient sources outlined wartime boundaries for women. While there were no formal ‘rules of war’, ancient writers nonetheless suggest that there were certain social conventions particular to the treatment of women in Classical Greece at times of war. As chapter 1 shows, perhaps surprisingly, women were not always evacuated from their communities as is commonly thought, they were not supposed to be maltreated, nor killed in Classical Greek warfare. Chapter 2 then examines ancient authors’ positive and negative evaluations on the behaviour of women in war. By analysing the way in which different sources rationalized women’s wartime behaviour, this thesis shows that there existed boundaries for women in war. Having established women’s potential involvement in war, an exploration follows of their contributions to the war effort, both in the city and abroad. Two observations emerge from chapter 3. First, women were heavily involved in crucial wartime activities such as defending the city, distribution of food and missiles, giving military advice, among others. However, they also participated in negative and traitorous wartime behaviour such as facilitating enemy soldiers to escape a city under conflict. Second, their wartime contributions were not perceived to be ‘breaking social norms’ as is commonly maintained in much scholarly discussion. In chapter 4, the analyses of the different social and economic impacts of war on women reveals that war affected them directly through their experience of evacuations and their necessity to find employment due to wartime poverty, but war also affected women in more insidious ways, especially in their family life and relationships. Finally, chapter 5 then analyses the impact of war with special reference to women’s experiences in post-war contexts such as captivity, slavery, and rape and sexual violence. By showing the variety of experiences and how there existed selection processes with regards to women, this chapter demonstrates that not all women were going to experience the same fates after war. The result is the emergence of a rounded picture of the wartime lives of women in Classical Greece.

L’étude archéologique des auditoria dans le monde romain en tant que salles de cours, de lectures publiques, de démonstrations rhétoriques pouvait sembler impossible. En effet les sources littéraires indiquent que ces activités se pratiquaient, semble-t-il, dans des lieux indifférenciés, portique, salle du conseil local, temple, thermes, théâtre, cubiculum etc. Les sources épigraphiques sont très pauvres et ne peuvent être corrélées à des vestiges archéologiques précis. En outre, à supposer que de tels lieux aient existé, comment pourraient-ils être identifiables ? Y a-t-il une structure spécifique à une salle de cours comme il y a en a pour des latrines, un théâtre, une basilique civile ? La découverte au XXe siècle de plus d’une vingtaine de salles au centre de l’Alexandrie antique ainsi que celle, plus récente, des « Auditoria d’Hadrien » à Rome incite à rouvrir le dossier archéologique ; en outre certaines salles ou édifices avaient été par le passé caractérisés comme ayant une fonction d’enseignement ou de divertissement intellectuel. Mais aucune synthèse n’avait été proposée jusqu’à maintenant. Le catalogue ici constitué étudie 127 salles édifices ou espaces, dont 84 relèvent de sources archéologiques. Il en ressort un tableau d’une grande diversité tant du point de vue de la dimension des salles ou édifices et donc de leur capacité, que du point de vue de la structure (plans en hémicycle ou quadrangulaire, salles dans un complexe ou édifices indépendants, salles ou édifices à gradins droit, courbes, sans gradin…) ; les données sur l’élévation sont pauvres en général tout comme celles sur la décoration, sauf exception. Cette grande diversité, ainsi que les difficultés mentionnées initialement, conduisent à interroger explicitement les critères d’identification des salles ou édifices comme lieu de la paideia ou des monstrations rhétoriques. Celle-ci ne repose pas sur l’identification d’une structure, comme on peut le fait pour un théâtre, une basilique, des latrines etc… En fait, il n’y a aucune critère permettant l’identification : la décoration n’est pas spécifique et même si l’itération est un trait souvent présent il n’est ni nécessaire ni suffisant. Aussi, l’identification repose, non sur des critères, mais sur une méthode, qui combine plusieurs approches : certes la prise en compte de la structure, de l’itération mais aussi la considération de la syntaxe architecturale, l’insertion dans la topographie urbaine ainsi que l’étude du contexte culturel, sans oublier la polyfonctionnalité de l’architecture romaine. Les identifications auxquelles on parvient ainsi n’ont pas un caractère de certitude absolue ; elles relèvent de tous les degrés de la croyance et sont donc soumises à discussion et révision. / The archaeological study of the auditoria in the Roman world, as class-room, spaces for recitationes or declamations could seem impossible. From literary sources, these activities was performed in no specific spaces, as portico, bouleuterion, templum, theater, cubiculum and so on…Epigraphical sources are scarce and can’t be linked to well-defined archaeological finds. Furthermore, even such spaces have been real, it seems impossible to identify them: a class-room has not a proper structure. In the XXth century, 20 class-rooms were unearthed in the center of antic Alexandria and more recently, “the Hadrian auditoria” were discovered in the center of Rome; in the past, some spaces or building have been characterized as auditoria but a synthesis has never been tried till now. In the catalogue, 127 rooms or buildings, 84 from archaeological sources, are studied. These rooms or buildings are very various; they have different plans; the elevation is often unknown; the decoration is not specific; the capacity is variable. From this diversity and the difficulties listed up, the problem of the identification of the paideia spaces rises. In fact there is no criterion for the identification: neither the structure, nor the decoration or the ‘iteration’ are specific features. The identification is possible through a method and not from criterion. The method combines different points of view: the study of the structure and iteration of course, but also the architectural syntax, the urban topography, the cultural context and the ‘polyfunctionality’ of the Roman architecture. So the degrees of the belief concerning the suggested identifications are various; so they can be discussed and reappreciated.

La tête végétalisée est un témoin privilégié de la culture visuelle des Romains. Innovation de l’époque tardo-républicaine et proto-impériale, elle n’en demeure pas moins l’héritière du traitement formel de figures telles que la Rankenfrau et le Rankengott et d’un symbolisme végétal séculaire. Elle évoque une nature naissante ou renaissante qui ne possède pas encore les frontières du cosmos ordonné, et fonctionne comme une épithète iconographique permettant de mettre en évidence un aspect particulier d’un personnage, tel le dieu Oceanus. L’étude des spécificités culturelles et des traditions iconographiques des différentes régions de l’Empire romain, couplée à la mise en série et à l’analyse contextualisée des documents, permet de mettre en évidence les formes de diffusion, de réception et d’appropriation de ce thème ornemental, de sa naissance à son assimilation par le monde chrétien. A côté de tendances relativement homogènes communes à l’Empire, se dessinent quelques courants particuliers, comme l’enrichissement nord-africain de la forme océanique, le renouveau oriental de la bordure à rinceau peuplé héritée de la tradition picturalisante hellénistique, ou « l’humanisation du végétal » gallo-germanique. Entre traditions et innovations, la tête végétalisée du monde romain développe des spécificités iconographiques pérennes qui lui confèrent une signification inhérente à toute forme d’hybridité végétale, tout en permettant à différentes visions du monde de s’exprimer en elle sans se dissoudre. / The foliate head is a privileged witness of the Roman visual culture. This innovation of the tardorepublican and proto-imperial period is the heiress of the formal processing of figures such as the Rankenfrau and the Rankengott and of a secular vegetal symbolism. It evokes a rising or returning nature which doesn’tpossess the borders of the orderly cosmos, and works as an iconographic attribute which highlights a particular aspect of a character, such as the god Oceanus. The study of the cultural specificities and the iconographic traditions of the various regions of the Roman Empire, combined with the serial approach and the in-contextanalysis of the documents, allows to highlight the various forms of diffusion, reception and appropriation of this decorative theme, from its birth to its assimilation by the Christian world. Next to relatively homogeneous trendscommon to the Empire, some particular tendencies take shape, such as the North African enrichment of the oceanic shape, the oriental revival of the border with peopled scroll inherited from the Hellenistic naturalistic tradition, or the Gallo-Germanic « humanisation of the plant ». Between traditions and innovations, the foliated head of the Roman world develops long-lasting iconographic specificities which confer it a meaning inherent to any shape of foliate hybridity, although it allows various views of the world to be expressed in it without being dissolved.

In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that what I call the magic contest tradition, that is the episodes of competitive wonder-working that appear in a wide variety of apocryphal and non-canonical Christian texts, made an important contribution to the development of Christian thought during the second to the fifth centuries CE. This contribution was to articulate ‘the way’ to be a Christian in a world which was not isolated from the secular, and not insulated from the reality of the Roman empire. First, I demonstrate that a tradition of texts which feature magic contests exists within the broader scope of non-canonical Christian literature (looking at this literature across communities, regions and time periods). Second, I identify what the major features of the traditions are, e.g. what form the narratives take, what the form for a magic contest is, and what the principles used to build the magic contests are, and how these principles feature in the texts. The principles I identify are power, authority, ritual, and conversion, as well as their use as historical exempla. Third, I discuss what the texts did in the context of the time period, and for the communities that produced and read them: in other words, how did the this tradition work? I show that they served multiple purposes: as tests of faith, religious truth and ways to proclaim such; as constructors and markers of group identity (and the perilous task of identifying the insiders and those who should be outsiders); as calls to unity within the overarching diversity of the times and places, and a unified front for the ‘battle’ against evil. I suggest that the texts present a model for how one could decide what the ‘true faith’ was and how one could practice it in the turbulent environment that early Christians faced both before and after Constantine.

This study investigates, via the socio-rhetorical approach, how the Jewish-Christian conflict that occurred during the formative period of early Christianity, and the environment contemporary to the writing of John, took shape around three main questions to which the researcher's answers are given. The event described in John 9 is an historical and significant illustration of the conflict. Jesus is shown rhetorically, by the writer, as the Son of Man, in whom "divine reality" operates away from the temple or other traditionally sacred places like the synagogue, and finds a new locality in the persona of Jesus himself. From a polemical view, John endeavours to portray Jesus as holy man, the only one to mediate heavenly and earthly realities, and that is why Jesus is presented as the real locus of the encounter between God and human beings, a locus of the divine presence, or "the conduit for the transmission of the divine." / New Testament / MTH (NEW TESTAMENT)

This Creative Writing PhD consists of a novel, The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul, and accompanying critical essays, Ottoman Crossroads: Coffeehouses, Politics, Theatres and Storytelling. The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul is historical in nature, and magically real in temperament. It is an account of fin de siècle Constantinopolis, and contains forgotten fairy tales, remnants of an ancient manuscript culture, Armenian playwrights, Turkish feminists, Greek fortune-tellers and Sephardim cantors. It tells the tale of six intersecting lives in 1876, a time known as “the year of the three Sultans” in Ottoman history. This period was filled with tensions between traditionalism and Westernization, but also new political possibilities forwarded by the Young Ottomans. While the characters in The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul are fictitious, they are inspired by historical events and figures. The second element of my PhD, Ottoman Crossroads, is made up of four individual essays that focus on selected themes from the novel. They scrutinize, in order of presentation, the history of coffeehouse culture, the secretive society of the Young Ottomans and their political thought, the formation of Armenian-Turkish theatre, and the rediscovery of Ottoman fairy tales. Whilst the novel and essays are coherent independently, they also link to each other in ways that are sometimes direct, and at other times subtle.

This study investigates, via the socio-rhetorical approach, how the Jewish-Christian conflict that occurred during the formative period of early Christianity, and the environment contemporary to the writing of John, took shape around three main questions to which the researcher's answers are given. The event described in John 9 is an historical and significant illustration of the conflict. Jesus is shown rhetorically, by the writer, as the Son of Man, in whom "divine reality" operates away from the temple or other traditionally sacred places like the synagogue, and finds a new locality in the persona of Jesus himself. From a polemical view, John endeavours to portray Jesus as holy man, the only one to mediate heavenly and earthly realities, and that is why Jesus is presented as the real locus of the encounter between God and human beings, a locus of the divine presence, or "the conduit for the transmission of the divine." / New Testament / MTH (NEW TESTAMENT)